It was neither psychological theories nor theological doctrines that ultimately rescued me from myself, my past, my wounds, and my old self-sabotaging stories. What transformed me were actual healing experiences. When I have experienced love from another person, it has healed me. When I have experienced love in the form of a miracle from God, it has healed me. Knowledge is necessary but never sufficient. What you know in your mind must be experienced in your real life and real relationships or it will remain just an idea, powerless and pregnant with possibility. Ideas inform, but it is our experiences that transform.
Transformation is often used in a positive context but it is a neutral word. Traumatic experiences transform us in one way. Loving experiences transform us in another. Unfortunately, we have all had too many negative experiences that have wounded us. If we truly want healing, we must create and craft more positive experiences that counter the negative, wounding experiences.
Talk therapy and prayer are two common paths Westerners use to try to solve problems and heal their emotional wounds. However, if these practices do not lead to experiences that open up one’s heart, mind, body, and soul to change, growth, courage, compassion, and love they are ultimately powerless. This isn’t to say that therapy and prayer have no purpose, they do, but they are modes of transportation to move you toward healing experiences, not an end in and of themselves.
The experiences of our every day lives either heal us or traumatize us. We should be seeking out and creating as many healing experiences for ourselves and others. The best way to do that is to live with love, wisdom, and integrity.
When it comes to the difference between knowledge and experience, I will let the haunting words from an anonymous Rwandan genocide survivor speak to the cavernous gap between the two:
We had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide, and we had to ask them to leave. They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you began to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. There was no acknowledgment of the depression as something invasive, and external that could actually be cast out again. Instead, they would take one at a time into these dingy, little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that happened to them. We had to ask them to leave.